29 August 2011

Prioritize D-I-M-E

Diplomatic
Information
Military
Economic

Clearly, if you take the "M" out of DIME you get "DIE", but does that make the "M" most important?

Prioritize DIME. Why put them in the order you did? Under what circumstances might your priorities change?

By: Brant
Posted by Brant at 20:29
Labels: , ,

2 comments:

Guardian said...

My instinctive reaction is:

1) Information: For better or worse, perception is everything. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. The Soviets and their allies considered the US and our allies to be the aggressors. There are many other examples. If you can successfully shape perceptions and win the battle of "hearts and minds," you might be able to achieve your objectives without ever firing a shot.

(This ties into my hypotheses about domestic politics.)

2) Economic: A colleague who graduated from a small Midwestern university shared a profound theory of power. There are two means of coercion: gold and guns. If you can't convince another party to see things your way (Information), direct or (more likely) indirect economic power is the next best option. Economic power is also king at the level of national strategy: US economic power determined the outcome of WW2 and the Cold War and economic issues (including the rise of China and other countries, competition for economic resources, etc.) will shape at least the next 10-20 years.

3) Military: Decisive, but dangerous. This is the power of last resort.

4) Diplomatic: I simply don't buy it. Strongly-worded letters from the UN, long-winded negotiations, etc. do not, by themselves, have any real effect. These actions always have to be backed up by tangible power. A strongly-worded letter from the UN isn't going to force a tin-pot dictator to change his ways. A strongly-worded letter accompanied by a carrier battle group and the 82d Airborne's Division Ready Brigade deploying into your neck of the woods has a lot more credence.

-- Guardian

29 August, 2011 23:29
Anonymous said...

Information: Getting, gathering, disseminating. The world we live in thrives on information and getting your message out first makes all the difference even if it is not correct (Johnny Taliban knows how to do that quite well).

Diplomacy: I had a professor who taught great power diplomacy (1815-1914) and he stressed that talking and talking and then talking some more will keep you out of a global war. When people stop talking then jingoism becomes the norm and silly wars tend to break out for no reason other than my wang is bigger than yours.

Economic: Gots to have the jobs and capability to make things. Without a moderate economy you end up with more despotism and become a leach on everyone else on the planet.

Military: The last resort and using it in an integrated fashion with DIE is an absolute must to get the most out of your military and DIE. But military leading or standing alone gets your North Koreas and Burmas;that gets you a whole lot of nothing except a useless Diplomatic effort, no economy except to support your military and information passing/gathering etc... that is more concerned with spying on its own citizens than doing something useful.

30 August, 2011 12:40

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